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Lenovo 300s (14”) Review

Back in October, Lenovo released a new set of laptops that used Intel’s Skylake processors. One of these laptops was the 300s. The 300s is the cheaper and slightly thinner little brother of the 300. The 300s is available in 2 sizes, the eleven inch and the fourteen inch. The fourteen-inch model is much more powerful than the eleven inch. For this review I will be using the 80Q4000KUS model. You can get the 300s with the following hardware setups:

Up to 8gb DDR3

Up to Intel Graphics 520

Up to 1tb 5400rpm HD

Bluetooth 4.0

Lenovo AC wireless 802.11 a/c

Software

The Lenovo 300s comes with a little bit of bloatware but not too much. It comes with a McAfee 30 day trial, Candy Crush Soda Saga (Native to Win10) and some Lenovo software. Overall though it does not get in your way too much and it is all very easy to uninstall. I found that none of the drivers needed to be uninstalled.

Hardware

The Lenovo 300s comes pretty packed for the price. It can be easily overclocked and it runs quite cool. The 300s does have some extra perks such as Always-on USB ports and 4 USBs. The 300s boots relatively fast and is nearly silent.

Keyboard

The keyboard on the 300s is actually quite nice. It comes with all of the usual keys along some keys that you usually do not see on a laptop such as the Home and Page keys. Along with those it also has lots of function keys that do things like turning the display off and reloading your browser page. The Trackpad on the Lenovo is decent however it is very easy to right click instead of left, as there is no physical border between the keys.

Sound

The speakers on the Lenovo 300s face down, but they can get very loud and are hard to accidently cover up with your leg. The microphone can pick up a lot of sound and is very responsive.

Camera

The camera on the 300s is actually pretty decent. It can record up to 720p at 60fps. I have found that there is no noticeable lag between the sound and the video in a recording.

Battery

The battery on the 300s is 3 cell and does 45 watts. I have found that on average it will last me about 5 hours of active use.

Display

The display on the 300s is a full HD 1920x1080p 14 inch display and gives pretty good viewing angles. Out of the box the color needed a slight recalibration, my display gave a slight blueish tone.

Size

The 300s is 0.77 inches thin and only 3.9lbs heavy. The Lenovo is easy to carry around and could easily fit in a backpack.

Conclusion

Overall, the 300s is a great budget laptop for those looking for something that is powerful but yet light and thin. The Lenovo is a great choice if you are looking for a media laptop. The 300s has very few cons in total and it is a great laptop for the price.